Dublin Airport Metro to have unconnected terminus?

@murphaph wrote:

I used to agree with using Irish Standard Gauge for metro to make it compatible with DART but looking at the propsed post T21 network and knowing that the RPA metro is in fact to be light rail, similar to the fantastic Metro do Porto and the metro units will be able to share trackage with Luas, it’s a better call to stay with European Gauge. Think of all the current and future Luas lines that are/will be at or near metro levels of segregation from traffic and imagine the metro units being able to access those stretches, providing many more 0 change journey possibilities. The much maligned Red Line actually has vast amounts of segregated running, virtually all the way from the Square to James’s is highly segregated and crosses few streets-it’s only the awful city centre stretch that suffers delays with the many junctions it encounters. The Green Line from Sandyford all the way to Charlemont is almost entirely segregated. The future Luas to Broadstone will run in the old MGWR alignment from Broombridge Station along by the railway down to Broadstone before emerging onto city streets (probably) to run down O’Connell street to connect with the extended Green Line. This Luas is likely to be extended in a completely segregated fashion to beyond the M50 via Finglas where it will cross the metroWest. The reason this is likely to happen is that the N2 dual carriageway provides an ideal environment to go elevated like the metroNorth along the swords Bypass. Don’t think of it as purely Luas and purely metro-there is a blurring of the lines on the horizon and it makes sense for a sprawling city like Dublin to have a two-pronged approach to it. It will be possible for example for metroWest trains to run from Ballymun to Citywest or the Square, rather than terminating at Belgard Road and forcing a change.

There are some very interesting points raised and useful possibilities highlighted in that post. What is still not clear to me though is why these projects could not be carried out using Irish gauge. What is the advantage to using European gauge for these projects? As I understood it, the Sandyford Luas tracks were built so that they could eventually be relaid using the Irish gauge.

Murphaph, you seem to be better up than me on some of this so i won’t argue !

Although i thought that P11 were calling on the RPA to use the IE guage, certainly they do in their technical assessment, in which they also claim that the metro will not have sufficient capacity to meet demand with the platform length restricting the trains to 3 cars ? maybe this is referring to an older rpa spec, i’m not sure …

The original metro proposal was from Parnell Square to Dublin Airport;

you can thank http://www.platform11.org that it is now to be routed from Swords to at least Stephens Green

Originally posted by Sarsfield
Where can I get me one of those cards? I have an opinion I’d like to share.

I got it in the post! I suppose only people on the 3 proposed routes got a RPA booklet detailing with the Porto metro on the cover and with a map detailing the routes with a suggestion card to fill in and send back, freepost. Or as it just Swords that got this?

Thats great!

RPA now welcomes submissions from interested parties in relation to all of the route alignments being considered. To help ensure that your views are considered, we would appreciate it if you would complete and submit our Contact Us form

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have P11 changed their position on the track gauge too ? surely IE’s network post interconnector will be far more extensive than any metro/luas combination in the next 20 years ?

Also still curious about integration with the interconnector, the RPA fail to mention it in most correspondence. It seems quite strange that we’re looking at the prospect of boring two major city centre tunnels, both of which pass through the same city centre terminus, completely independently of each other ?

Interested to hear the views of TP & yourself murphaph (and anyone else for that matter) on how the metro & interconnector will integrate & the gauge issue …

not trying to set up an argument mind 😀

@Peter FitzPatrick wrote:

have P11 changed their position on the track gauge too ? surely IE’s network post interconnector will be far more extensive than any metro/luas combination in the next 20 years ?

I’m trying to get clarification on that. The metro is now no longer a heavy rail proposal so the old position is a little out of kilter in my view.

In my opinion there will be far more metro trackage potential in 20 years than IE trackage. In theory you could have metro levels of service from Citywest-Swords, Square-Swords, Cherrywood-Ranelagh, Stephen’s Green-Swords, Liffey Junction-Broadstone. There are longer term plans to bore a tunnel from Stephen’s Green to Tallaght and I can imagine in 20 years boring a tunnel from Broadstone to Ranelagh and extending the Luas line in a segregated manner to the M50 (takng the alignment originally proposed for the airport metro) to tie into metroWest, creating a hell of a network by adding one tunnel (Broadstone-Ranelagh) to the Platform for Change outline. You could also consider the Tallaght line in as far as Fatima to be almost metro grade segregation wise and this could someday see a tunnel bored from Fatima to Broadstone for example to create another cross city metro grade route. Remember the Red Line is only slow and painful from James’s to Connolly, the much longer bits in the suburbs are like a metro.

@Peter FitzPatrick wrote:

Also still curious about integration with the interconnector, the RPA fail to mention it in most correspondence. It seems quite strange that we’re looking at the prospect of boring two major city centre tunnels, both of which pass through the same city centre terminus, completely independently of each other ?

Well the metro units will be a lot smaller than the double decker DARTs IE propose to allow through the interconnector someday so the bore diameter will be very different and you’d never bore bigger than you have to (cost). The tunnels will cross at right angles anyway and th rolling stock will not be compatible so it’s not a big issue. There will be full integration between the two. The metro station will be constructed using the ‘box’ method whereby a large box is sunk from street level down. It’s very intrusive. The interconnector stations will all be mined from the inside out and should be far less intrusive during consrtuction. The interconnector wil naturally be under the metro. The RPA will have to allow for escalator/elevator shafts to the installed from the mezzanine level down to the interconnector or via the metro platforms (better). The real worry about metro/DART integration is at Cross Gunns Bridge. This is a vital connection which the RPA seem to be ignoring!

Are there examples of cities which have an underground system which operates on two different gauges?

It is fully future proofed to the standard required by the Rail Safety Commission to accomodate two broad gauge trains; I don’t think that speed is an issue on a purely suburban line. Given that this line was a twin tracked broad gauge line at 27′ 6” historically.

The only part of the line that required real future proofing was the Dundrum Bridge which the RPA have started renting out to mobile phone operators spoiling an attractive piece of engineering.

Yes but when the London Underground was built how many independent rail operators existed?

20 or 30 or more, it was many years before a single operator existed; as asked above if they had the choice post integration of their companies would they have selected a different gauge?

It is very interesting that in the UK that services have been franchised but the track retained in the hands of a single operator.